45 G 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. 17, 1910. 
Hawking on the Plains. 
New York, Sept. 2. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: So much has been printed first and 
last on the passenger pigeon that the public 
should know much about it. Still the question 
whether this once enormously plentiful bird is 
extinct or not is of great interest to many 
people. 
The record of the occurrence of this bird in 
Washington or Oregon, given by Townsend, 
has led to much misunderstanding, and many 
people who have seen the band-tail pigeon on 
the Pacific Coast have concluded that it must 
be the passenger pigeon. I have long been dis¬ 
posed to believe that the passenger pigeon has 
never been found in this extreme Western 
locality, but that the report of its occurrence 
there was based on misidentification. 
On the other hand, a number of observers 
have seen the bird well up the Missouri River 
and in the foothills of the Rockies. The West¬ 
ernmost point at which I personally have seen 
it is near the head of Heart River in the State 
of North Dakota. 
This bird was seen under circumstances which 
were more or less exciting, and though the tale 
was told long ago, it may be worth recalling 
now, even though an old story. 
We were on our way back from the Black 
Hills of Dakota. Gen. Custer, who believed in 
and practiced early starts, had 11s afoot soon 
after daylight on Aug. 28, and the long column 
of troops was stretched out, winding over the 
prairie. That morning I rode with Headquar¬ 
ters, which led the column; and as the horses 
walked faster than the infantry and the wagons, 
it was the custom from time to time for Head¬ 
quarters to halt, so as to permit the column to 
close up. That morning was rainy, and when 
we halted about 6:30 a. m., the men, instead of 
lying down on the ground and going to sleep, 
as they usually did when a halt was made, were 
standing or squatting by their horses. All or 
most of them saw the unusual chase. 
As I looked out over the plain toward the 
north. I saw two birds swiftly approaching us. 
Their flight was rapid, and in a very short time 
they were quite near us. At a considerable dis¬ 
tance I did not recognize the birds, though the 
manner of their flight seemed to show that, as 
I thought, they were two falcons, one pursuing 
the other. As they drew nearer, however, I saw 
that the leading bird was the smaller of the two, 
and that it was making every effort to escape 
its pursuer, darting and twisting from side to 
side, and flying at its best speed. One of its 
turnings brought it close to us, and forgetting 
its natural shyness, it sought the cover of the 
command, and darted in among the men and 
horses. I now recognized the larger bird as the 
duck hawk and the smaller as the passenger 
pigeon. 
The duck hawk followed its prey in its turns 
among the animals, but at last a quick double 
by the pigeon put it behind a group of men and 
horses. It alighted on the saddle of a horse 
close to me, while the falcon rose 30 feet or so 
in the air and hovered over 11s, looking for his 
prey. Two or three of the men shouted at the 
hawk and scaled their hats into the air to drive 
it away, but it disregarded their efforts. Then 
almost immediately the pigeon started to fly, 
dashing out over the open prairie. The falcon 
followed, and the dodging of the pursued bird 
began again. Once the pigeon tried to return 
to the command, but the falcon cut him off and 
drove him toward the plain, and before he had 
passed out of our sight, caught the pigeon and 
flew heavily off to a distance. 
The sight was a most interesting one—a 
scepe of falconry, the contest in speed being 
between two birds commonly regarded as 
among the swiftest of those that fly. 
’ G. B. G. 
Quail Abundant. 
Raleigh, N. C., Sept. 10 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: Reports from twenty game wardens 
in the State show that so far during the close 
season there have been remarkably few viola¬ 
tions of the game laws in their territory. Here 
in Wake two men were fined for shooting bull- 
bats, one for killing squirrels and one for catch¬ 
ing an opossum. The wardens say there is an 
unusually large crop of young quail. The sea¬ 
son of breeding was favorable, the crop of small 
grain one of the largest ever grown in the State, 
while very large areas have been planted in 
what are here known as cornfield peas, one of 
the best sorts of food for these or other birds. 
Several wardens report an unusual number of 
wild turkeys. In some of the counties east of 
here, along the shores of the great sounds, bear 
hunting has begun. 
The Asheville section is to have another im¬ 
portant forest reserve, 3,800 acres, all in splendid 
timber, known as Buck Forest. It is the prop¬ 
erty of the heirs of the late Frank Coxe, of 
Philadelphia, who for many years before his 
death was a resident of the beautiful mountain 
region in Transylvania county, where this forest 
is located. The timber will not be cut. This 
forest is to be another playground for Asheville, 
and the guests of the Battery Park Hotel are to 
have the run of it. A concrete dam is to be 
built on Little River, which traverses this forest, 
and a lake of over 500 acres will be the result. 
In the forest there are many very attractive 
waterfalls. A club house is to be constructed 
and also boat houses and other attractions. 
F. A. Olds. 
Biltmore Forest School. 
Cadillac, Mich., Sept. 10. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: On Aug. 11 we left Asheville en route 
to Cincinnati. We were met at Cincinnati by 
the Assistant Secretary of the Hardwood Manu¬ 
facturers’ Association.' We arrived in Grand 
Rapids, Mich., Aug. 13. 
A location for a school of forestry more ideal 
than our present quarters can hardly be imagined. 
We are right in the heart of the best hardwood 
timber growing in the northern United States. Log¬ 
ging operations are going on all about us. On Aug. 
25 the wind, strong from sunrise on, gradually 
rose to the velocity of a cyclone, littering the 
ground near our camp with primeval trees.. In 
ten minutes all was over; no one was hurt in 
the camps. Three and a half million feet of 
trees were prostrated. Luckily the sections af¬ 
flicted are to be logged in the fall and winter, 
anyhow. 
The school will sail for Darmstadt, Germany, 
on Oct. 4 in the good ship New Amsterdam of 
the IIolland-America line. 
Herbert Sullivan, Class President. 
New Publications. 
Motor Boats, Construction and Operation; 
Automobile Driving Self-Taught; Ignition, 
Timing and Valve-Setting. Three handbooks 
by Thomas H. Russell. Flexible leather, 
octavo, 288, 222 and 223 pages respectively, 
fully illustrated from drawings and photo¬ 
graphs, $1.50 each. Chicago, the Charles C. 
Thompson Company. 
These are books the motoring sportsman needs, 
and every one of this growing class should read 
one or all of them. Our waters are being 
crowded with motor boats and our highways with 
motor cars driven by men lacking experience and 
common sense, and others who follow the axiom 
of learning to walk before they run, and their 
helpless companions, women and children, are 
frequently jeopardized by the inexperience and 
ignorance of the careless ones. Too often the 
purchaser of a motor boat or motor car is in 
such wild haste to run his boat or car that he 
learns nothing of its mechanism. He can make 
it “go” or he cannot; why this is so he does not 
know. In truth he is to be pitied a’most as much 
as the feeble-minded philosopher of the early ’70s 
who claimed that the bicycle he had invented 
could be run at a 75-mile-an-hour rate, and that 
only three-quarters of an hour’s time was re¬ 
quired to stop it. But you do not feel like pitying 
the man who, through ignorance of the rules 9f 
the road, or of the water, runs you down. Be¬ 
sides practice under the direction of a skilled 
driver or boatman, every owner should read care¬ 
fully such manuals as these. They describe, with 
the aid of detailed drawings, all the working parts 
of cars and boats, their functions, care and re¬ 
pair; discuss supplies and equipments; and tell 
what not to do, which is as important on the 
water as on the highway. Motor boats and'ears 
for comfortable easy-going travel are here to 
stay, and too* much praise cannot be accorded 
them. They are well made and not at all com¬ 
plicated, as many persons imagine; but in order 
to care for a motor in the boat or car it propels, 
the owner must understand its details, and this 
cannot be done by looking at its housing. 
A, B, C of the Motorcycle, by W. J. Jackman 
Flexible leather, 222 pages, illustrated from 
drawings, $1.50. Chicago, the Charles C. 
Thompson Company. 
Gottlieb Daimler, a German engineer, Mr. 
Jackman tells us, invented in 1886 the first motor- 
driven two-wheeled vehicle, and four years later 
a Buffalo firm put out a heavy bicycle equipped 
with power, this being the pioneer American 
motorcycle. But when Carl Benz, another 
German, with an invention of his own, ex¬ 
ceeded Daimler’s record of ten miles an 
hour by two miles, the public was incredulous. 
Although the present-day machines are far from 
perfect, in them the speed of the early types has 
been multiplied many times. In a light vehicle 
carrying considerable weight and with its 
mechanism fined down to the last ounce, con¬ 
siderable care is required to keep it in condition, 
and this handbook is filled with all the detailed 
information needed by the motorcyclist. 
All the game laws of the United States and 
Canada, revised to date and now in force, are 
given in the Game Laws in Brief. See adv. 
